The Future of Autopackage
Saturday, March 4th, 2006I was reading a post in the Lockergnome Linux Fanatics issue today about the future of Autopackage. For those who don’t know Autopackage think of it as the Windows Installer for Linux. It takes the binaries and puts them into an easy to install package very similar to software installs in Windows. I installed a game once using Autopackage (Globulation Alpha 15 (0.8.15)). I was very impressed with how clean the user interface was and how easy the installation was.
In general, Mike’s post on Autopackage talks about the current state of the project, where it is heading, the good / bad / ugly of the situation and how to get Autopackage out there in the public more. There appears to be reticence on the part of some Linux Distributions to adopt Autopackge or even get it to work well with their distributions. Since I do not have any first hand knowledge of this I cannot comment directly. However, I do know how hard it is to get some software working in other distributions, so I do not fully understand why distributions would not start to embrace this type of software.
One comment on Mike’s post makes a great point. Chris wrote:
pushing Autopackage harder than crack to people thinking about software installation on Ubuntu. With the Debian XULRunner problems, and Firefox 3 using Autopackage by default, you’re going to have a good opportunity to use Mozilla as a lever to get into Ubuntu.
When I wanted to install Firefox 1.5 in Debian when it was first released I was told that it was basically broken for using the ‘apt’ tool and to download the binaries from the Firefox website. Well I did that and it did work, but doesn’t that go against the purpose of package management? I am sure that Debian has fixed it by now, but it sure was frustrating to find it difficult to install the newest software.
So, if I ever get to use Linux full time again (I’m considering giving Ubuntu another try) I will sure push for some sort of unified software installation and management software. If not Autopackage then something like it. Users just want to be able to USE the software and not fight it during the installation.
One final thought… someone will surely mention that software installation in Windows is NOT full-proof. I will admit that. However, it is pretty darn easy to install software of any type.